Pecca was nice enough to do this after I requested it, 'cause having such great staves but no ranged blast on the SotM sounded weird to me.
Actually a Chromatic Orb attack would be a sweet possibility since it would be more unique.
Would it retain the +5 enchant to hit and just mimic the effects without cast the actual spell? +1 to this !
Mimic the max level version, or perhaps max damage and a random effect to each hit? -> I don't think it would be so unbalanced due to the saves, and it would retain the possibility to produce a "happy hit" (Does petrify still destroy items? that would not be cool -_- )